Tag Archive for: HGTV

Toilet Paper Origami and Absolutely No Wastepaper Baskets Allowed!

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My Curated Bookcases

By Lois Winston 

Last month I blogged about how my husband and I were getting ready to move from New Jersey to Nashville to be closer to family. We’ve since taken another step toward that goal—our home for the last twenty-three years is now on the market.

 

In the course of my married life I’ve lived in four different houses. However, the last time we moved HGTV wasn’t part of the American consciousness. No flippers, renovators, or stagers brainwashed the public about the necessity of open-concept, tray ceilings, and hardscaped yards with outdoor kitchens. Hardwood floors aren’t enough. They have to be wide-planked hardwood. And of course, the cardinal sin these days is the dreaded popcorn ceiling. Buyers have been conditioned to take one look and immediately do an about-face, as if a popcorn ceiling is in the same category as termites and radon.

 

We’ve always lived in older homes. We love the charm of Victorian and Craftsman architecture. The oldest house we’ve lived in was built in 1891, the youngest in 1939. Our current house is a 1935 Craftsman Bungalow. It isn’t open-concept with twelve-foot ceilings. It doesn’t have a Carrera marble waterfall island in the kitchen.

 

There are forty-four photos online along with floor plans and room sizes. Any interested buyer has the ability to see the house from top to bottom and inside out from the comfort of their own home before deciding whether they want to see it in person. No one looking for a new home with an open concept plan, spa bathrooms, and huge walk-in closets would even consider an in person trip to our house. Or so you would think. Yet by some of the feedback we’ve received, that’s exactly what is happening. I would imagine the realtors are not happy with having their time wasted in this manner.

 

Nor am I happy, because each time a tour is scheduled, I have to race through my house, hiding wastepaper baskets, toiletries, bathroom floormats, and dishtowels. I have to make sure there are full rolls of toilet paper in each bathroom dispenser and that the top sheet is folded into a point a la upscale hotels. Nothing can be left on kitchen and bathroom countertops. No shampoo bottles and soap in the showers.

 

All of this and more was on orders of the house stager hired by the realtor. She walked through our home before it went on the market and handed us a homework list. Then she returned to make sure we had complied. Now, I’m all in favor of making my house as presentable as possible to secure a sale. A cluttered house doesn’t show well, but I don’t like clutter. So my house was not in need of lots of work prior to going on the market. 

 

Not according to the stager, though. She insisted I buy lemons to float in a clear pitcher of water to be put on the picnic table on the deck. She insisted the flowers I had planned to place on the dining room and kitchen tables were only white and in clear vases. She even insisted I curate my bookcases, getting rid of ninety percent of my books. I’m an author. I have a lot of bookcases throughout my house, and they hold a lot of books, most of which are now squirreled away in cartons hidden in the back of closets—along with the wastepaper baskets. (It’s spring allergy season. Do you know what a pain it is to dig through the back of a closet for a wastepaper basket every time you need to discard a tissue?)

 

I’m wondering if buyers are that gullible. Will they not make an offer on a house because there are too many books in the bookcases? Or because I forgot to fold the toilet paper into a point for one showing? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I now have all sorts of plots rolling around in my head for future mysteries. Want to guess the identity of the victim in many of those plots? So maybe all that work is worth it, whether it increases the price someone is willing to pay for our house or not. At least I now have ideas for future books.

~*~

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.

 

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Missing Person Alert: Where’s Ina?

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For a bunch of writers, I notice that we all watch a lot of television. So no surprise that this entry is not only about television programming, but a complaint about its delivery.

In my town, you have two choices for cable television. If I choose one, then I can’t get MSNBC. Not acceptable. If I choose the other, which I did, for the last three weeks I couldn’t watch The Barefoot Contessa or House Hunters. Cablevision and Scripps were engaged in mortal battle and in the meantime, both the Food Network and HGTV were not available. Heck I could give up Keith Olbermann, but Ina Garten? Grrrr

There was a third alternative, but I’m hoping that environmentalists and historians will applaud my decision not to subscribe to DirectTV. Here’s why. We actually did use their services, quite happily, until we made the fatal mistake of upgrading to one of those big TVs with High-Definition, which means I can see the pores and plastic surgery scars of actors on crime shows, and my husband and kids can watch sports ad nauseum, constanly murmuring that it was better than if they were in the stadium (for one reason, there’s no cost for constant snack service). So once the new television was delivered, I called DirectTV and was even perfectly willing to pay the premium for the upgraded service. I was only mildly annoyed when it appeared that they had cancelled the appointment without telling me. But in fact, they hadn’t cancelled the appointment, they had, in effect, cancelled me. It appears that the 200+ year old tree in my front yard was blocking the necessary reception for the upgrade and I had only one choice. Cut down the tree (horrified gasp) or change providers. They were astonished I chose the latter and continue to inundate me with constant entreaties to come home again, albeit treeless.

Of course, like more than 50 percent of cable-TV watchers, I see no program during its original showing. I DVR anything of interest and watch it at my leisure. Or if I just want to watch the highlight that is being discussed around the (virtual) water cooler, I check out YouTube. First, I rarely stay up late enough to see any of the better dramas – and a device that lets me skip ads – worth its weight in gold.

A far cry from when I was growing up. Then you built your week around the television shows you wanted to watch. If you missed an episode, you were resigned to waiting months until it was shown in reruns during the summer. Then came VCRs, and while I never did master the art of scheduling a taping, I was still able to amass a small library of tapes of my favorite shows. Of course, then the guys in suits (almost all male) realized that folks were willing to actually pay to buy a tape(s) of entire seasons – and if they threw in a couple of commentaries by the director or stars (who often seemed surprised at the episodes in which they appeared) – there were big bucks to be had.

Which brings me back to my original whine. Until late Thursday night, it appeared that I was going to have to put Ina Garten on a milk carton in order to find her. Even if she adores fennel – which I loathe – and even if she has never met a stick of butter she didn’t use or a tablespoon of salt that she didn’t add – I adore her recipes (modified as necessary) and her style. I love that when asked by actress Jennifer Garner, another fervent fan, if she could appear on her show – Ina, size 24 and proud of it, politely declined and said “Only my real friends appear on the show.” And how about House Hunters? Despite the fact that the couples inevitably pick the ugliest house of the three they’ve been shown, I want the opportunity to yell at the television set in the vain hope that they’ll change their minds and buy themselves a house that doesn’t have an “open floor plan” where everyone in the living room can see their dirty dishes.

I was ready to rent a billboard with this warning: Scripps/Cablevision – get this settled or things are going to get ugly in the Evelyn David (Northern half) household. Don’t make me tell you again or it’s on your head that a perfectly healthy old tree will be kindling.

Another victory for tree-lovers everywhere.

Evelyn David

Are We Done Yet?

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by Susan McBride

Before I met Ed and we bought a house together, I didn’t have cable. I never watched TV much so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Once we put our names on a mortgage and combined our worldly goods (okay, mostly my worldly goods and a few of his that went into his basement Man Cave), I realized the addiction that is HGTV. I think the first weekend after Charter turned on our cable, I watched 12 hours of a “Design Star” marathon. Needless to say, I was totally hooked. When I went through my breast cancer stuff and was forced to take mandatory bed rest, I probably watched every HGTV show ever produced.

And it’s like the “Harry Potter” movies for me: I can watch the same shows over and over and over. Scary, isn’t it? I love to see ugly rooms transformed in under $2,000 (“Designed to Sell”) or even under $500 (“Design Cents,” although sometimes I think the folks who had the cheap re-do should ask for the money back). Never a fan of clutter, I adore when Tabitha on “Get It Sold” instructs hapless housesellers to pack up their crap. “Look, you can see the gorgeous hardwood floors!” she’ll gleefully exclaim after boxes of plastic kids’ toys and endless wedding photographs are sent to storage.

The bad thing is that all these shows keep inspiring me to whip our house a little closer to perfection. It’s almost there, really. I’m just figuring out what to do about the large bedroom window now that we’ve gotten rid of a huge old armoire (and an equally huge old TV), moving a few things around so our room seems twice as big. Do I go for the $692 custom lined drapes with walnut rod and rings? Or do I go thrifty and order the $79 per panel silk dupioni drapes from Pottery Barn? (Honestly, I’m having trouble deciding! I keep telling myself the $692 would be helping the economy, right?)

Then there are the shrubs in front of the house that were overgrown when we moved in (I swear, the doctor who owned our house before us didn’t trim a shrub or prune a tree in three years). I had Dave from Ray’s come out last week and give us an estimate to cut the bushes off at their ankles and dig out the roots. Once they’re out of here, we can repair the window frames and screens that have been smothered by evergreen boughs before the grinder comes and runs over my tulips and daffodils.

Oh, yeah, and I still want to remove the oven hood and spray it white with appliance paint (it’s the only thing in the kitchen that’s original and it doesn’t match anything), and I’d like to get all the windows washed, inside and out.

All the while, my husband keeps saying, “Are we done yet?” Which is kind of funny considering the list on the side of the fridge which is full of “future projects.” Do men really think a house is like a steak? Is it ever really done?

Perhaps I can blame my drive to decorate, landscape, and fix what needs fixing on HGTV (or, as likely, the joy of having anything to distract me from a fast-approaching deadline). Whatever the cause, I’ll promise this: when Clive and Tabitha and Lisa LaPorta finally beautify the last cluttered, paint-peeled, ill-landscaped house in America, I will take down the “to-do” list from the fridge. And we will be done. For real. Maybe.

P.S. I’m in Houston today at the Texas Library Association convention as you read this. I’m also signing stock at the Blue Willow Bookshop, shooting a segment for “Wild About Houston,” and signing at Murder by the Book tonight at 6. So any further home improvements will have to wait ’til I get back.